Networks converging around us

Networks today have reached speeds that used to be considered to be unimaginable. The average family now has broadband internet at their home that reaches speeds around 5 or 6 mbps. Now that we've all got household networks capable of lightning fast speeds, we of course have had to find ways to use them that can actually harness all that bandwidth. Now on a single broadband connection, we can have one family member in one room watching high definition television, another family member in another room video-calling someone across the world, and another family member playing xbox live with all their friends. It's amazing that all of these things can now be done over a single network connection. I think for me the interesting thing is seeing the way that it all evolves. Currently you're seeing the big push for being able to stream high definition video. In the next few years you'll likely see that transition to include 3D video. While our networks will continue to evolve to be able to support these new types of media, I'm interested in seeing what new types of applications emerge to take advantage of the added bandwidth. In the last few years we've seen Skype become a tool that is actual used throughout the world. Perhaps we will finally see Jason's dream of the holographic technology show in Star Wars and in Japan's World Cup bid finally become a reality.

The next era of the internet

In a recent interview with the Sydney Morning Herald, Vint Cerf declared that the world will run out of ip addresses in just a few weeks. IP addresses are essential to the operations of the internet. This will mean that in the last couple decades that the internet has been running rampant, the world has used up 4.3 billion ip addresses. This causes a huge problem for nearly everyone who currently uses the internet. In order for the internet to continue functioning as it currently does, we're going to have to see a very quick and massive transition. The ip addresses that we're running out of are ip v4 addresses. What we'll have to see a transition to is ip v6 addresses. The ip v6 addresses will allow for 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 total addresses (see http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-20029318-93.html). This is actually a little bit easier than it sounds when you consider that if all the major companies transition, there will be plenty of v4 addresses left so that ordinary users can transition at a later date (presumably controlled by the ISP's). So now after many years of companies such as Google and Facebook harvesting and manipulating users and their data, it's time for these companies to do something for us. They need to coordinate together and ensure that this transition is seamless and essentially unseen by the everyday user.